Monday, 16 November 2009

Last night at the Brisbane Camera Group (BCG) meet up I learnt a handy tool for photographers on Google Earth: the sun timer slider.

This tool allows you to view the sun and sunlight falling across a landscape.

Find your place you wish to be for the example here we have chosen Burleigh Heads National Park on the Gold Coast, a terrific place for both sunrise and sunset photography.

The seventh icon across the top is the sun timer slide. This is what it looks like.

When you activate this the slider appears in the top left of your view.

Move the slider to the day and time you wish to view and it shows the movement of the sun across the landscape so you can identify if it will be in shadow, bright sunlight etc at that time of course depending on weather conditions.

You can also activate it by click View > Sun and to hide either click the icon or View > Sun again. To display an animation of sunlight across the landscape, click the ‘time slider play button’.

What a great tool especially when venturing into mountainous terrain and with Google continuing to upgrade this service our areas to view in detail will only get better and better.

Thanks Mr Google, whatever did we do before you came along? And thanks Bernard for sharing this with us last night.

Burleigh Heads on the 17th November 2009 at 6.14am The darker areas show what is still in shadow